44 TYPES’ OF BRITISH PLANTS 
have seen the thistledown travelling along to worry some 
farmer’s heart. The beautiful white tassels of the Wild 
Clematis, or Old Man’s Beard, are developed to carry the 
seed floating in the air. 
Animals and birds, in their turn, have to play a large 
part in distributing seeds; and that is only fair, for, as we 
saw, it is on plants that they depend wholly for their own 
living. The birds may be trying in the way of devouring 
fruits, but then in return they often drop the seeds a long 
way off, and so do for the plant what it could not do for 
itself. Waterbirds, again, when floating in a pond, get 
seeds in their feathers or on their legs, and then carry 
them away to other ponds. Insects, such as ants, carry 
off seed-vessels to their nests, and do not eat the vital 
parts, and a squirrel’s forgotten hoard may introduce a 
new visitor to a wood. 
Aninals are the great agents, for they carry off great 
numbers of seeds, and flowers make preparation to use 
them by arming their young family with barbs and 
hooks. You probably know a climbing, straggling plant 
that grows in hedgerows, which is called by various 
names, such as Stickweed, Goosegrass, and Cleavers, and 
bears little round seed-vessels about one-eighth of an inch 
in diameter and all covered with hooks, which you can 
feel and see without the aid of any magnifying-glass. 
These cling vigorously to your clothes, and you may 
carry them miles before you fling them into a new ditch. 
The burrs of the Common Burdock cling yet more closely, 
and it requires some real exertion to pull them off one’s 
clothes, so you may imagine how far they may travel 
when fastened safely into the wool of a sheep’s back, 
or in amongst the hairs of cattle. Some of these prickly 
seeds are really dangerous, for they have sharp spines, 
